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Anthropology professor Helaine Silverman on pandemics and fear

How history helps us understand COVID-19

Date

05/08/20

Anthropology Professor Helaine Silverman reflects LAS News about her research and teaching on the history of the English village Eyam. Its inhabitants self-quarantined for more than 14 months in 1665, during the Plague pandemic. Professor Silverman teaches about Eyam and its selfless sacrifice in her Archaeology of Death class.

“The moral lesson of Eyam,” Silverman said, “should give us hope that if a society decides to act decisively for the larger public good through selfless decency, cooperation, tolerance for inconvenience and—in our case—acceptance of scientific facts, then we will get past this infectious episode and hopefully emerge a better people, even a better nation.”

Professor Fennell of the Department of Anthropology presented an invited paper on the New Philadelphia Archaeological Project under the tile “Resilience and Racism in a 19th Century American Heartland: New Philadelphia and the Vagaries of Prejudice.”